Maintaining biocultural diversity is an act of supreme collective intelligence according to Gary Martin, Director of the Global Diversity Foundation. Local community knowledge may hold the keys to addressing global challenges like climate change, ecosystem health and food security.
The biological, cultural and physical resources we need to sustain life are being depleted by humanity. According to the European Environment Agency, the threat to habitat and species is ‘terrifying’. Simultaneously, local knowledge on maintaining cultural landscapes and environments is being lost through uniformity imposed by a globalised society and the demands of an increasingly industrialised planet.
Members of local communities are uniquely placed to confront environmental and social change. As decentralised and dynamic knowledge societies, they are capable of adapting to global transitions. Even as they bear the brunt of globalisation, they are leaders in experimenting with new modes of prevention, adaptation and mitigation.
Such innovations and other sustainable ways of maintaining interactions between ecology and society can be transferred between communities around the world dealing with the economic and environmental crisis. In our contemporary society, biodiversity and cultural diversity need to be encouraged to flourish and the lessons learnt passed on in an equitable way.
Participants in the forthcoming Schumacher College course Valuing Diversity: Learning from ecosystems & cultures will explore contemporary concepts and practical issues in the fields of biocultural diversity, ethnobiology, Gaia theory, the indigenous story and mechanisms for adaptation and re-adaptation.
Teachers on the course include Gary Martin, Director of The Global Diversity Foundation; Juan Mayr Maldonado, previously Minister for the Environment in Colombia; and Stephan Harding, expert in the study of Gaia theory and deep ecology.
A further course on the theme of ecological wisdom and the connection between nature and culture will take place at Schumacher College later in the year: Earth Jurisprudence and Community Resilience: Learning from Africa
